In many different types of systems, an analog-to-digital converter (ADC) can be used to convert an incoming analog value to a digital value. Such ADCs are useful in many contexts. Specifically, an ADC can be used to monitor a real world value, namely an analog signal such as corresponding to a voltage of a given circuit, a temperature, a level of a monitored piece of process equipment or so forth, and converted to a digital value for use in a control system, as an example.
Different types of ADCs are available. To enable conversion of many different analog values, one common ADC is a successive approximation ADC. In general, this type of ADC can generate an N-bit digital value in N clock cycles. When many different input signals are to be converted to digital values, this amount of time may not be suitable for all purposes.